[akdev1l]

I mean it looks like they did try to redirect writes somehow. They probably tried more sane options until they arrived here.

>there is no formal concept of an installer or package in Windows.

this one is on them, I think package managers already existed - doesn’t seem like there was ever a blocker for windows to have a package manager but Microsoft never bothered until very recently

[mike_hearn]

With hindsight sure, but I don't think any desktop operating systems had package managers in that era. macOS certainly didn't. NeXTStep had their .app bundle concept, but no legacy. And UNIX package managers were of no use - few of them properly supported third party packages distributed independently of the OS vendor, especially not ones that could upgrade the OS itself.